Sr. Validation & Tools Engineer - Embedded Firmware at ALSO
Palo Alto, CA
$160,000–$190,000from the description
Jul 14, 2026
Palo Alto, CA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior engineering role focused on validating firmware and software for small electric vehicles. The position involves building and maintaining SIL/HIL test environments, writing test strategies and automated test pipelines, managing firmware release validation cycles, and conducting root cause analysis on system-level issues. It suits an experienced embedded systems QA engineer with a background in automotive or consumer electronics and strong skills in C/C++, Python, and CI/CD tooling.
Senior level · 5+ years · San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA · Bachelor's required · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 10 people in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software quality assurance analysts and testers). range 2–15
Applicant volume Light — Few people clear these requirements, so an application that does clear them gets looked at. Worth applying to even if you miss a nice-to-have.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $170,192 (middle half $126,400–$188,281). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (5)
The degree requirement states 'Bachelor's or Master's' — Bachelor's is treated as the minimum hard gate.
The automation tools section (Robot Framework, Pytest, Selenium, Appium, Espresso) is explicitly called out as 'a plus', so it is marked preferred. These are grouped as alternatives since the JD presents them as interchangeable options for the same automation requirement.
CANoe/CANalyzer experience is also explicitly flagged as 'a plus' in the posting.
The alt SOC 15-1252 (Software Developers) is noted because the role has a significant automation engineering and pipeline-building component alongside its core QA/validation focus.
Location is inferred as Silicon Valley / San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara CBSA based on the posting's explicit statement that the company is 'located in the heart of Silicon Valley.'
Read the full posting
The employer publishes the full description on their own site — read it there ↗. Or sign in to read it here — it's free, and it also lets you track this application.